Netflix: Sky Movies is our number one target, not Lovefilm

Netflix is to focus on delivering exclusive content in the UK, and that includes securing the first window rights to Peter Jackson's forthcoming blockbuster The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

During a one-to-one chat, Adrian Cockcroft, the company's "cloud" architect, told Pocket-lint that it plans to take on Sky Movies rather than Lovefilm, and the way to do that is by signing up the big productions.

"What we've been doing recently is outbidding HBO and Sky. So we have exclusives on things like The Hobbit in the UK. It's not just that we will have The Hobbit, but that it won't be on anyone else. It will just be on Netflix," he said.

"We've started bidding for exclusive rights on new movies. We will be going in there and trying to unhook as many of those deals as possible."

Those "deals" are already starting to be made, even though the fruits of the work haven't yet been seen. In the US, Netflix will have the exclusive rights to the Oscar-winning The Artist and, as mentioned, has also secured the rights to stream The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as soon as it comes out on DVD in the UK.

"The Hobbit will not be on Sky Movies for a number of years," said Cockcroft.

"It is a long-term plan. In the US, we have done a deal with Dreamworks that means we will have Shrek 5 in 2013. We've had to plant some long-term seeds to get those kinds of things, but you will be seeing more of them."

In a move that will no doubt scare the satellite broadcaster - and perhaps prompted the announcement of its own forthcoming on-demand pay-per -access service - Netflix is also promising to produce proprietary content.

"We are also doing Netflix originals," he told us.

"We are working on a remake of Arrested Development. There is a US version of the BBC's drama The House of Cards directed by David Lynch and staring Kevin Spacey.

"We are on a very long-term play, and the exclusives will gradually build. As we get more revenue we will invest that in content."

That's great for a couple of years' time, but what about now? Netflix believes it has the answer. And, for the UK, that means more US TV shows for us to watch.

"In the short term, we have a lot of really good American TV for the UK audience, and we have complete seasons of them. If you look at what is being watched in the UK, those are the ones that float to the top of the list," he added.

That success is because, Cockcroft tells us, the company was able to licence a lot of good TV relatively easily because it hasn't been sold exclusively in the UK, something that isn't normally the case with movies.

"We will never have everything. But what we are aiming at is to be very much like a Sky Movies or HBO by offering people the content that they want. We see ourselves competing more against Sky Movies than just Lovefilm," he said.

Stuart has been a tech journalist since 1998 and written for a number of publications around the world. Regularly turning up on television, radio and in newspapers, Stuart has played with virtually every gadget available.